Greetings SimplySim team,

I am a member of a student research group that is developing autonomous underwater and surface vehicles at Georgia Tech Savannah. While looking into using Microsoft Robotics Developer Studio for an unrelated land-based project, I came across your website and watched one of your YouTube videos, MSRDS 2008 Underwater Simulation.

In this video a robot is seen maneuvering in an underwater environment. This is the first case I have seen of Microsoft Robotics Developer Studio being used to simulate water.

I would appreciate any information you could provide concerning the details behind that video, as well as any information on aquatic simulation as it relates to Microsoft Robotics Developer Studio.

Thank You,
Sean

Hi Sean,

Thanks for your interest in our simulations

The underwater simulations you've seen in this video are only visual simulation (no physics). It was used to validate the AI of the underwater robot and to test the vision algorithm for an underwater student competition (Student Autonomous Underwater Competition - Europe). This simulation was used in 2008 and 2009 by the teams of the University of Nice and the university of Cambridge.

We are now developing a new simulation engine that will still be fully compatible with MSRDS but with a much improved visual rendering and physics simulation. We've already done some aerial simulation with realistic physics using this engine, and the same technology can be applied to create underwater simulations. This new engine is now in a mature prototype state and should be available in early 2010.

if you're more specifically interested by a project (underwater or not) don't hesitate to contact me directly: copigneaux at simplysim .net

Bertrand.